Hacking Christianity

Fountain Filled with Blood Atonement

This video merited 34 comments in an hour on facebook from a dozen different churchworkers (clergy and laity). Lemme know what you think:

Key gut-check moments for me were the completely unexpected 0:38, and I was open-mouthed at 3:44 (though it did look like someone saw Carrie too much...h/t JAA). The Rockettes at 3:06 almost made up for it though.

Personally, I think videos like this are good in that they depict the viscerally disturbing aspects of blood atonement and are good conversation starters on atonement theories. It's like Mel Gibson's The Passion...I think that movie did more for discussion of alternate atonement theories than it probably intended! No understanding of atonement is complete or perfect and I think discussion of them is at once challenging but helpful in the long run.

Thoughts on the video?

Anne Rice and Christ/ianity

I never was an Anne Rice fan and only marginally enjoyed Christ the Lord series of books she wrote after converting. But she showed up in my feed reader this morning as she has disavowed Christianity but will continue to follow Christ.

Let's break it down point by point. She wrote on her facebook page:

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else

source

I sympathize with the perspective that Christianity is quarrelsome and full of disputes. But what group isn't? It is human nature to conflict, dispute, resolve, and move on to the next conflict. Even Christ himself was constantly in conflict with those around him, so if Rice is looking for a consistent state of nirvana, it ain't Christ.

Read on for more updates and the responsibility of seeking redemption for flawed human movements.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

source

Well, honestly, if that's Christianity then I'm not one either, on every single point. Christianity is not monolithic, and every social issue or theological issue has people across the spectrum on it. It did not begin that way, and it has only gotten more spread out over time. There will always be people to disagree with in your club, but you gotta keep your membership card to get the benefits.

Finally, she writes an hour-ish ago before this post.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become

source

For more reactions, Michael at ThinkChristian.net wonders if this is a reaction to the culture wars: people leaving Christianity due to the conflict and continuing to be "spiritual" but not part of a "religious" movement. And Jim at BoxTurtleBulletin dredges up a status update previously that points closer to why she chose to leave Christianity as a movement:

[Anne Rice's] embrace of Catholicism was of a personal and spiritual nature, and as is not unusual among Catholics, didn’t extend to social issues...Rice was ultimately unable to reconcile her belief in Christ on the one hand, with the actions of fellow Christians and how those actions have stained the Christian “brand” on the other. She appears to have hinted at this with this post on her facebook page which appeared on Tuesday:

Gandhi famously said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” When does a word (Christian)become unusable? When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?

Her last point hit me in the gut, not from realization of something but from my long-standing wrestlings with this. The way I see it is that no human movement is without its flaws, even the ones we believe to be divinely driven and sustained. Even the bible is not without its flaws and errors that do not translate 2000 years in the future. The constitution, heralded as the pinnacle of human freedom and collective sustainability, only considered white men to be people.

Maybe that's why Jesus drew people close to him as a group rather than directing them one-on-one. In our flaws, we find out how to be human together. As a group together, we help those flaws become smoothed out until we are people without wax. Christianity without Christ is folly, but willingly following Christ in solitary does not heed his example either.

It comes down to if you think Christianity is redeemable. If you want it to be redeemed, then stay inside and work for change. If your denomination's doctrine and policies rub you the wrong way, stay inside and work for change. If you love something, truly love it, then you have to see it as redeemable, and then it is your responsibility to work to redeem it...even if all you do is plant the seeds that someone in the next generation actually gets to bear fruit.

What do you think? Thoughts? Post them in the comments and welcome to the conversation!

The Psycholgy of Altar Calls

One of the first difficult discussions I had with the Board of Ordained Ministry was over invitations to Christian Discipleship (ie. "altar calls"). It is customary in the sermons we submit to include an invitation to accept Christ into your life via an altar call. I did not include one and they asked me why. Instead, I invited the recipients of the sermon to action, be it offering hospitality or seeking justice or truth-telling. It was my understanding that Christ invites us continually, not just once, and we respond continually as we seek sanctifying grace. Thus began a 4-year conversation with the Board over my weak embrace of an altar call praxis.

While as a pastor I have of course led people to Christ, as a layperson I can recall only one: a youth at a summer camp. It was a camp that was heavy on emotional 2-hour worship with a rockin' band and sweating preachers. This youth and I had a good relationship, and on the last night of camp when other youth were coming to the altar, without my prodding he accepted an altar call, asked me to walk with him, and credited me with inspiring him to discipleship.

I have thought of that youth for a decade now, and while I praise God that he chose the path he did, I wonder about the reasons why.

Was it the band?
Was it the preacher?
Was it seeing others walk down the aisle?
Was it feeling like an outsider all week and wanting to be included?
Or was it the Spirit and I should stop analyzing it?

I'm certain it was a combination of the above, with the Spirit affecting the large majority of it. But I cannot help but wonder to what extent did the psychological role of emotive worship and the social-psychological effect of altar calls affect the situation? Are those means justified by the ends of saving people to Christ?

The seersucker seminarian pointed me to a post by Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson. He recounts an article that speaks well of my reservations with altar calls and my lingering concern that "the ends justify the means" mentality is intrinsic and inseparable from altar calls.

The article by 1970s preacher Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones is reprinted here in its entirety (source here, bolded sections are my bolds).
===========

Question: During recent years, especially in England, among evangelicals of the Reformed faith, there has been a rising criticism of the invitation system as used by Billy Graham and others. Does Scripture justify the use of such public invitations or not?

Answer: Well, it is difficult to answer this in a brief compass without being misunderstood. Let me answer it like this:

The history of this invitation system is one with which you people ought to be more familiar than anyone else, because it began in America. It began in the 1820s; the real originator of it was Charles G. Finney. It led to a great controversy. Asahel Nettleton, a great Calvinist and successful evangelist, never issued an “altar call” nor asked people to come to the “anxious seat.” These new methods in the 182Os and were condemned for many reasons by all who took the Reformed position.

One reason is that there is no evidence that this was done in New Testament times, because then they trusted to the power of the Spirit. Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost under the power of the Spirit, for instance, had no need to call people forward in decision because, as you remember, the people were so moved and affected by the power of the Word and Spirit that they actually interrupted the preacher, crying out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” That has been the traditional Reformed attitude towards this particular matter.

The moment you begin to introduce this other element, you are bringing a psychological element. The invitation should be in the message. We believe the Spirit applies the message, so we trust in the power of the Spirit. I personally agree with what has been said in the question.

I have never called people forward at the end for this reason; there is a grave danger of people coming forward before they are ready to come forward. We do believe in the work of the Spirit, that He convicts and converts, and He will do His work. There is a danger in bringing people to a “birth,” as it were, before they are ready for it.The Puritans in particular were afraid of what they would call “a temporary faith” or “a false profession.”

There was a great Puritan, Thomas Shepard, who published a famous series of sermons on The Ten Virgins. The great point of that book was to deal with this problem of a false profession. The foolish virgins thought they were all right. This is a very great danger. I can sum it up by putting it like this: I feel that this pressure which is put upon people to come forward in decision ultimately is due to a lack of faith in the work and operation of the Holy Spirit. We are to preach the Word, and if we do it properly, there will be a call to a decision that comes in the message, and then we leave it to the Spirit to act upon people. And of course He does.

Some may come immediately at the close of the service to see the minister. I think there should always be an indication that the minister will be glad to see anybody who wants to put questions to him or wants further help. But that is a very different thing from putting pressure upon people to come forward. I feel it is wrong to put pressure directly on the will. The order in Scripture seems to be this – the truth is presented to the mind, which moves the heart, and that in turn moves the will.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

=================

Thoughts?

Faith in the In-Between

Some Christian theologies (ie. Determinism & resurgent Calvinism) states that

"Everything happens for a reason"

Science and empirical studies of cause/effects states that

"Everything happens because of a reason."

Between these two lies chaos,

with neither the answers for why things happen

or for what reason do they happen.

Perhaps there in the chaos

between these certainties

is where doubt resides

where the Christian faith abides.

One that accepts neither cheap trite answers

or that what we can observe is all that there is.

What's between "everything" and "reason" for you?

What's your in-between?

(Inspired by Scotteriology)

Should be in every church...

[Jesus] died to take away your sins. Not your mind.

/ Taken at a United Methodist congregation I visited last week
// It is actually the very first pic taken with my new iPhone
/// Yes, that's me in the mirror. That's me in the spotlight. ~~Losing my religion~~ Waiting for my ordination interview.

The Nazareth Principle for Coping

I'm still waiting. But while I am, I found that Andrew Sullivan has a link to a father's conversation with his son. I love it.

Our son Simeon says that faith is summed up in something he calls the "Nazareth principle". This refers to the question in the New Testament where someone scoffs at Jesus the carpenter by asking, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

The idea was that Nazareth was a city, in the region of Galilee, which was known for its "mixed-blood" and therefore suspect practice of Judaism. Because the carpenter/prophet came from Nazareth, didn't that disqualify him from being the real thing?

Yet as Simeon says, in life -- time after time -- the best things come from the unlikeliest places. And this "Nazareth principle" extends to the fact that out of trouble and wounds, disappointments and closed doors, come often the actual breakthroughs of personal life.

I am constantly amazed at the areas of our life that grace unexpectedly comes from, and the people that I don't expect to be grace-filled that are so.

This could be helpful in coping with trauma and difficulty. It's not about ascribing meaning to suffering; it's not about believing God has a plan and pain is part of the plan; it's about finding "what good can I find?" in the midst of pain and transition, and what unexpected breakthrough might come from it?

Thoughts?

Richard Alpert and Doubt [LOST]

As a quick followup to this morning's post on doubt, last week's LOST had an interesting take on the role of doubt. Richard Alpert has (presumably) been doing Jacob's bidding for a few centuries and once that role is taken from him (I'm being intentionally vague for fear of spoilers), doubt consumes him.

Here's the exchange I'm talking about:

RICHARD: What I'm talking about Jack is that...Jacob touched me, and when Jacob touches you... well it's considered a gift... except it's not a gift at all. It's a curse.
JACK: Why do you want to die?
RICHARD: I devoted my life, longer than you can possibly imagine, in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason, that he had a plan, plan that I was a part of, when the time was right that he'd share it with me, and now that man's gone so...why do I want to die? Because I just found out my entire life had no purpose.

To Alpert, certainty was the crutch of faith that he leaned on, certain belief in his role. But when that certainty was taken away, he felt lost and alone, going through a dark night of the soul. It seems like a parallel journey to people who subscribe to determinism, or that every action is willed by God to have a purpose (ie. purpose-driven, perhaps?). When the pieces don't fit together, how does one keep their faith? Or is it better to allow it to die and be resurrected anew stronger than before after the dark night has passed?

Clergy, Don't Stop Believin' (Hold on to the Feelin')

At Hacking Christianity, we often study bad.hacks of the Christian system, ie. actions or beliefs that hurt the Christian witness to the world. Most of them, not surprisingly, deal with hypocrisy. So imagine how much Newsweek's "On Faith" section this week caught my eye with its intriguing conversation about what happens when clergy (or religious leaders) lose their faith and continue to lead a church.

The conversation reflects the same conversation in ordained ministry circles (especially at the level of my process that I'm at): what role does doubt play when it comes to doctrinal beliefs? What are the beliefs that are non-essential for conformity? Can ordinands affirm Christ as God's son, yet reject blood atonement? What are the essentials and at what point might clergy, whose own spiritual beliefs are often in process, see a divergence from their own tradition? Newsweek seems to present three understandings:

At one extreme of orthodoxy, you've got the presumption that clergy believe everything their faith tradition understands as doctrine. Thistlethwaite calls them robots who believe everything 100%, Hirschfield comments that such faith is "nothing more than static answers" which makes "God as its footnote." Carter wonders if the role of preaching is to be "a mere vessel for the transmission of orthodoxy?" I would almost claim that such a position makes doctrine an idol and a faith merely responsive, not reflective. While there are tons of people close to this belief (including an unfortunate number on boards of ordained ministries), 100% doctrinal assent is hard to sustain.

At the other extreme of orthodoxy is the divergence of the preacher's belief with the expressed belief of the tradition in which they are. The predominant sentiment is that such a position is unsustainable over the long run. Cal Thomas succinctly tells such people to resign and go sell something. Hirschfield says the same, but only when the clergy subscribe to "new articles of faith which demand the denigration of the previously held beliefs." Again, such a position is as difficult to sustain as total assent...the dark night of the soul has to end at some point, and you either see yourself in a tradition or you don't.

I think most clergy (honestly) find themselves between these two extremes. Perhaps the happy middle is clergy who are honest about their struggles with faith...while it is in process! Honesty is the best policy (Gaddy), while also respecting the roles of the pastor/parish (Hirschfield). Honest struggle can lead to what Carter talks about: the joy of about being a wounded healer, ie. a "beggar helping other beggars find bread." Finally, such struggles might be the vocation of the clergy, as Hirschfield reminds us:

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said it best when he remarked that, "the purpose of religion is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted". Applied to here, that teaching translates into the demand that spiritual questions and doubt should afflict the spiritually certain, while spiritual answers and faith should offer security to the afflicted.

Rabbi Hirschfield

Finally, the practicum: what ought clergy who wrestle with this do? Newsweek's panel responds with essentially:

If ones beliefs are held in question, be honest about the process while relying on non-parish members to be completely honest with and seek guidance.
If ones beliefs become more solid and they are not compatible with the faith tradition, find an exit from that parish/faith tradition...it is not sustainable.
All clergy should have a spiritual mentor who can talk us through the dark times and help us make these decisions along the way.

I would respond that the panelists miss out on a couple of clergy-types that I know of personally:

Clergy who grew more divergent the more they learned about the faith. Part of the ordination process is becoming very intimate with the essentials of the faith, but it is usually in the practice of ministry that we learn about the non-essentials that can be big deals. What do they do? Their "essentials" are in unity while the "non-essentials" are not. Do they stay?
Clergy who speak too much of their doubts and the parish reacts badly. I know of a church where expressing doubt is like blood in the water and the clergyperson was forced out. Such a fear or experience would cause clergy to not be honest about their beliefs while they are dealing with such things.
Clergy who express doubt all the time on the expression of our faith while holding sacred and true the abstract ideal of our faith. They are comfortable with their faith in abstract but wrestle with how to live it out in actuality. For example, Emergent Christianity holds doubt and mystery as essential components of a healthy faith (yes, such perspectives are mentioned a lot on this blog though I don't consider myself emergent).
Clergy whose faith traditions change over time and no longer speak to them. For instance, the fundamentalist takeover of the Baptist Convention certainly exiled women and progressives from their tradition...and it wasn't the clergy's fault! (EDIT: Gaddy talks about this a bit)

During my ordination process, I talked about being open with my doubts and concerns from the pulpit. I was told that people who were looking for answers wouldn't get much assurance from my sermon. I think such a sentiment reflects the first extreme: that we are to be 100% sure of our answers and offer answers to people. But for those of us who are more comfortable in the mystery of faith (which is NOT the same as refusing to take a stand or make up our minds), offering honest conversation about sustaining ourselves in our doubts is a clear pastoral duty. There's got to be a happy medium here, and this conversation was a reminder to offer a balance between doubt and assurance in the preaching moment.

At the end of the day, honesty and integrity are the most important qualities of a clergyperson. The first sermon that I got responses from nearly 100% of the congregation was when I preached openly and honestly that I doubted that Abraham passed the test of Isaac's sacrifice...people admitted to wrestling with child sacrifice for decades and had never verbalized it! By being honest about doubts but strong about my faith convictions, it opened up conversation that had sat dormant for 30 years or more. Wow.

I don't know if I will ever find myself in this situation of losing the faith in my tradition...Wesleyanism is so embedded it will be hard to chip out of me. But I hope clergy friends and former clergy friends can know that whatever they struggle with, there are good people out there to talk to and to find our way together through. Heck, drop me an email and I'd love to talk about it. But find a community to talk about it and together you can find a way through the dark, dark night.

Thoughts?

Not Much of an Almighty God

Bible Belt Blogger (whose site I lost for a long time and recently discovered again) writes about a story told at Oral Roberts' Funeral:

Pentecostal televangelist Marilyn Hickey preached the sermon at Oral Roberts’ memorial service today. And she shared an insightful story about her faith and ministry, laughing while she told it....
She said the first time that she preached at an Assembly of God Church, she commanded a man in a wheelchair near the back of the sanctuary to stand up and walk. But the man didn’t budge. So she hollered at him again: Stand up and walk. But still he did not move. So a third time, she thundered: Stand up and walk. But still no movement.
About that time, the pastor of the church stepped to her side and whispered: “Mrs. Hickey, he’s not going to stand up and walk. He has no legs.”
Oh, the story brought laughter to Oral Roberts’ memorial service. And Hickey laughed along.

BBB's Frank Lockwood's response was profound:

I didn’t laugh, however. I’ve seen too many self-proclaimed faith healers use desperately-ill people as props over the decades. And if Hickey’s Almighty God is incapable of healing legless men, he isn’t much of an Almighty God.

I had two responses to this story:

When I posted this on facebook, a woman who identifies as deaf wondered why people believe that "healing only means having senses and limbs that function "normally"?"
I remembered that last month a youth told me about a friend who is missing a limb, and was told by her pastor that she was made "wrong" on earth and she would be made "right" in heaven, if she got there.

There's a problem when power is translated into miraculous healing. When power is defined as miraculous, then one starts to wonder about the limits to such powers. And if one believes in an almighty powerful God, then nothing could logically be impossible healing-wise. It's a slippery slope that leads to disillusionment and abusive concepts of God.

In Kester Brewin's book Signs of Emergence, Brewin writes often about God changing the world through evolution not revolution. Christ's victory would not come in a flash or militant Messianic mob, it would come slowly over time of changed hearts and minds. A creeping light rather than a flashbang. This isn't a claim against God's sovereignty but rather an understanding that power to God may mean something else altogether.

Even though good faithful people die everyday with us left wondering why and how, I can believe in an Almighty God who heals people. Healing comes in many forms, physical and situational. But even if it is a physical healing, it is a slow process of forward/backward, good days/bad days, God working within our biologies and situations rather than dictating change. Often our situations overcome us before we think God is done, or perhaps we don't see the healing until later. In short, as my friend on facebook reminds us, healing may not mean a return to normalcy or "completeness" but may mean something else altogether.

Like Jesus in the desert, we are also tempted to believe in revolutionary change of miraculous healings. We are tempted to abuse that belief by becoming healing preachers who turn loaves of bread into empires of money. We are tempted to believe an Almighty God doesn't love us enough to send legions of angels to heal us. We are tempted to look across the landscape of our world from the top of the temple and declare that we know what God's power is like. We are tempted.

May we resist the spectacle of healings and instead see healing all around us, in tiny sparks, that give light as we walk together the road that leads to life.

Since WHEN does Kingdom = Dominion?

[[edit: 500th post at Hacking Christianity! w00t!]]

One of the important conversations coming out of the Uganda "kill the gays" bill is the theology behind those supporting and espousing it. Box Turtle Bulletin has a lot on it specifically here but in this space I'll be looking more at the theological concerns.

In short, it's been dubbed "Seven Mountains Theology" and here's a brief description from an adherent's website:

[We must be] Kingdom-Minded: Priorities are revealed in the proportionate use of time, funds and abilities directed to seeking His Kingdom with a perspective that intends to His Pleasure. The Kingdom must be our top priority, the principal thing to place before others as most important.

To establish The Kingdom of God on the earth, we must claim and possess The Seven Mountains of Culture namely: Business, Government, Religion, Family, Media, Education and Entertainment.

Here's a video that outlines it with computer-graphicy goodness:

Read on to talk more about the tension between kingdom and dominion.

To adherents, the name "Seven Mountains" is a reference to the seven mountains that the whore of babylon sat upon and ruled the world in Revelation. It is from these seven mountains that culture is influenced and if the whore is to be toppled, Christians must control these mountains.

For them, influence = control. From the video above:

When we lose our influence, we lose the culture.
When we lose the culture, we fail to advance the kingdom of God.

They embrace the term "kingdom" wholeheartedly, with its hierarchical structure as the top exhibits the strongest authority. A great band name ministry called Extreme Prophetic has this to say about what the kingdom looks like (video at minute 22, h/t Throckmorton):

While Christians are in pursuit of the supernatural, or the glory or prosperity, but they’re missing the apostolic assignment. They are to take over spheres and adminstrate them for the glory of God. They’re to take over spheres and administrate them for the glory of God. That’s the only way you can teach nations is when you take over a sphere and administrate it for the glory of God.

If your kingdom is top-down dominion, then yes, from the top of these "mountains" seems the best way to go about it.

In response, however, I can't help but be influenced by the Advent season where we welcome the Christ-child who came not as a conquering Messiah but as a powerless infant to a family in the midst of a top-down genocide (Herod's purge of the infants). A Christ-child who let the authorities kill him rather than dictate culture from the top-down (which he could have easily done and the Romans were so afraid of the possibility).

Of course, this church suckled up to Constantine and allowed the seven mountains to dictate its theology ever since the 4th century. So it is little wonder that hierarchical expressions of the kingdom get intertwined and find historical/biblical support against the reality of the Christ. It is little wonder that people who want to find something will find it in our history to justify their own positions today.

I think the Kingdom is more bottom-up than top-down, and these efforts to control spheres of culture are not only wayward but dangerous (look at Uganda's religiously-supported bill) and lead us closer to a cynical Constantine than to a compassionate Christ.

So, your turn:

Is the kingdom dominion, in that we are to control the spheres of culture and influence how the world or our communities operate?
Is the kingdom weakness, in that we are not to control the spheres but operate within them with grace and integrity?

Thoughts?

Souls made of Lego

There's some deep theology here but I can't quite articulate it. Any takers?

Was Jesus a Martyr? [open conversation]

These days we're doing a chapter-by-chapter discussion of Gonzalez's Church History books...what I thought was boring in Seminary makes for lively conversation in the church!

So the conversation came up about the early Christian martyrs and trying to define what 'martyr' meant. We waffled between two definitions:

Someone who dies for a cause *OR*
Someone who dies because of a cause

Then from the leftmost table (the troublemakers) came the question:

Was Jesus a Martyr?

So, which is Jesus?

Did Jesus die for his cause? *OR*
Did Jesus die because of his cause?

So, sound off. Which of the above statements is closer to your idea of Christ?

To me, this is an important question. Because how you answer may rely on your understanding of what Jesus' death means (ie. atonement).

If Jesus died for his cause, then there's a higher likelihood that you hold a redemptive atonement theory (penalty-satisfaction or substitutionary) because you place a high meaning on Jesus' death.
If Jesus died because of his cause, then there's a higher likelihood that you hold to an incarnational atonement theory (moral-influence or incarnational) because you place a high meaning on Jesus' life (and a prophetic life inevitably leads to death).

So, which is it?

Did Jesus die for or because of his cause?

And does either of those make him a martyr?

Discuss.

In Honor of the Rapture

Today is the supposed day that the Rapture is to take place. I'm still here blogging so I guess either (a) I'm not faithful enough, or (b) I have a clear mind before Zuul (reference).

After the break, enjoy the following parable told by Peter Rollins on the Rapture. It has a nice twist at the end that really got me thinking. Check it out:

===============================

The Rapture (revised), by Peter Rollins

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain. In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the Earth with Death upon its back and Hell in its wake. During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist. One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought to their knees.

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart. An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged into darkness and despair. But this could only continue for so long for, at the designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels,

“The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff”

Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice,

“Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing. Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out ‘Lord, Lord’”.

In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm. Leaving the suffering world behind them.

Once this great rapture had taken place God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,

“It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me. It is time now for us leave this place and take up residence in the Earth, for it is there that we shall find our people. The ones who would forsake heaven in order to embrace the earth. The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant.”

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth. Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark God. The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it.

====================

Thoughts? Happy Rapture Day!

Infinite Loops, Nintendo, and Human Depravity

I wonder if I'm being influenced by moving to Tornado Alley. In writing my draft of response to the doctrinal questions of the UMC (you'll see them eventually), I'm struck by a repeated theme in my answers: loops.

Some examples of concepts I'm tinkering with:

Humanity is not fallen, but swirling in circles without a firm foundation.
Humanity succumbs to cycles of violence which are not easily broken.
In the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, the other three marks circle like a funnel above the bible, constantly evaluating the bible in light of those three but never from the same place (or even elevation).
Cycles of steps in Sanctification and seeking Christian perfection (Wesleyan theology)

In programming terms, an infinite loop is one where a computer program gets a code or request that it cannot fulfill and its response evokes the code again. This infinite loop of request and response usually freeze the computer and causes it to crash and BSoD.

I wonder if this is the human condition (often called depravity): we are stuck in an infinite loop, swirling without stopping, succumbing to cycles of violence and unable to escape without the grace of God. This not only breaks these cycles but gives us a firm foundation to reorient our lives around.

One theological problem is that infinite loops are usually done by programmer error, which would mean that God as Programmer made an error in the human makeup or intentionally put us in this situation, neither of which is theologically acceptable to this blogger.

One possible response is found in an area near and dear to my heart: Nintendo video games. These games (or cartridges...the ones you blew into, remember?) are written as an infinite loop that will run until the power is turned off. Their consoles are so simple they don't have an operating system: thus, each individual cartridge is based on an assumed infinite loop to keep it running and to give the game's code inside the ability to work.

Perhaps then God as Nintendo Programmer writes us on an infinite loop, but it is the subprograms that we write on our own cartridges that cause us to foul up and lose our way. We write our own shallow reflections of infinite loops which cause us to get stuck in cycles and break the code within. But there is hope: our words and actions alone will not break the cartridge or ensure an upgrade, only God can do that. By realizing our life is reliant on God alone, all other cycles can cease and we can work on building up our own programs into life-affirming ones that continue even when the reset button is pushed.

....And all it takes is the breath of God blowing into our cartridges that gives us life! Hahahahahaha...whew...ok, I need to end this analogy.

I think this may be the world's first blog post on Nintendo and human depravity. Maybe that is too nerdy for Saturday morning and I should go back to writing my doctrinal answers. But for those of you that enjoy nerdy analogies (I've written them before)...what do you think?

(Graphic from Stevie Nova)

Radical Hospitality: Love Your Enemies' Arguments

In Luke's gospel, Jesus tells us to "love our enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back" (Luke 6:27-36). In these days beyond crusades and duels, our conflicts are primarily ideological: schoolyard arguments, coffee-table disputes, shouting pundits and unanswered questions in Sunday School. So how do we love our enemies on an ideological level?

We could start, of course, with respect and giving the other dignity in conversation. But that's only window dressing. In religious discussion (like politics), the goal of conversation so often is to persuade others to your viewpoint, or put up the best spirited defense of your viewpoint against imagined opponents. Indeed, that's the assumed basis for evangelism after all: to persuade others of the truth of Jesus Christ.

But we are called to love our enemies, and persuasion may or may not be the right kind of love. Indeed, that's what Peter Rollins gets to in his book (not)Speak of God. Evangelism relies on what Rollins calls power discourses that rely on word and wonder:

Power discourses...convince the other that Christianity is compelling and must be accepted by any rational person, and miracles prove that a person ought to believe.

P. Rollins, (not) Speak of God, pg. 37

Rejection thus becomes irrational. Calling our enemies irrational may be tough love, but it is also a claim to a position of superior power. Rollins calls the church to turn away and not rely on power discourses but to instead create sacred space where questions can be wrestled with. A sacred space with a sacred level of hospitality that goes beyond merely listening to the other. What could that look like?

Here's one idea: What if our goal in conversation is not to polish our own worldview in full view of others, but to build up the other's worldview to its best possible form?

That's what political commentator Julian Sanchez is making in a recent blog post (via Andrew Sullivan):

Consider the way our views normally evolve. We sort of hunker down in our ideological bunkers trying to fend off various attacks and challenges. Sometimes an especially forceful argument will require a modification in the fortifications—and on rare occasions, we’ll even be forced to abandon a position. Which is to say, we learn from other perspectives largely in a defensive mode, through a kind of Darwinian selection of arguments. But what if instead we tried to use the insights available from our own perspectives, not to defeat or convert the other guy, but to give his argument its best form?

What? In short, Sanchez is claiming that we learn about the other from an entrenched position (perhaps in our echo chambers) and we are not really engaging or honoring the other. But still...we are supposed to help them with their arguments??

Sanchez concludes:

...This might sound like giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but even in terms of the Darwinian struggle, there’s value to being able to show how your view trumps even the optimal form of the competition. Think of chess: You can’t see your own best move unless you have some sense of what your opponent’s best response would be. But the more intriguing possibility is that a smart progressive’s good-faith reformulation of libertarianism might be something that the libertarian, too, could recognize as an improvement—and vice versa.

In the Scripture, Jesus says to love our enemies. Even when we think we are right, and we know they are wrong. Perhaps the form of radical hospitality in ideological conflict, when we invite the other into conversation, is to take a cue from the Girl Scouts: leave them with their arguments better than they came with. To build up their arguments, to help the other better understand their own.

Then, perhaps, we can let the questions that follow from the Other either reinforce their belief or cause them to wonder why you would want to know about them. Who knows...they may ask about yours, or what another ideology or theology might say.

Thoughts? In these days of theological and ideological echo chambers and town hall shouting matches, the mere coaxing out of thought and argument is becoming more and more rare. So what if the radical hospitality that Christ calls us to exhibit...what if it can extend to thought as well as deed?

Thank you for your comments, and welcome to our visitors!

The Matrix, The Architect, and God

The Matrix Trilogy is a Christian Hacker's dream of nuanced meaning, theological dilemmas, and the sci-fi world of humanity v. machine. It makes me sweat.

In the Matrix Trilogy, the character of the Architect describes how the machines (who have taken over the world and enslaved humanity into a drea world) dealt with the variable called human free will which refused to be controlled or pacified:

[The Architect]: The matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the sixth version...You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed. Its every living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence eradicated...

The function of the One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which you will be required to select from the matrix 23 individuals, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the matrix, which coupled with the extermination of Zion will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.

The Architect rules the world even though all of life hinges on the unpredictability of a single human response. And each time that human life becomes able to pose a threat, the Architect manufactures events to force a reset of the system (and thus its continuation). The Architect plays God with unpredictable humans and does well until he accepts a different outcome in Neo, the seventh anomaly, who introduces a lasting change of peace between human and machine.

I know it has been a few years since these movies came out (I remember taking a group of 20 religion students to the first movie when it came out), but it is striking how when what I'm reading screams realization of what a movie plot point might mean.

In Kester Brewin's book Signs of Emergence, he outlines how God moves from transforming the world through revolutionary tactics (floods, smiting, etc) to transforming the world through evolutionary tactics (becoming human and embodying God's wishes rather than dictating them). One of the hinge points is in the Tower of Babel story where God scatters the human race that sought to reach God through illicit means:

We have seen that this sort of violent action iis pretty characteristic of God in Genesis: casting out and cursing, flooding and scattering, circumcizing and bartering over the destruction of Sodom. And like all revolutionary change, its effects are not transformative. People are scattered but continue to build cities...if God wanted to transform his creation, he couldn't keep periodically pressing "reset."

K. Brewin, Signs of Emergence, 125-126

In the end of the Matrix, humans and machines presumably learn to co-exist in harmony rather than dictated existence as slave and master. In the continuing story of the people of God, our God has chosen to stop smiting the world and pressing reset (reminding us every time a rainbow is in the sky that this is not God's way) and instead works with us to transform our hearts, turn our minds away from cyclical sin, and work alongside us for our redemption.

The only thing working against God: Free will, our human frailty, the anomaly that is part and parcel to Creation that God cannot stamp out or filter. As the Architect succinctly says:

As you adequately put, the problem is choice.

God has chosen to stop the cycle, and has placed a huge section of that responsibility in your hands. What will you do to hack the system, to stop those seeking to domesticate humanity (and thus God), and instead open the system to all those who seek God's presence in their lives?

Or will you choose the door on the right, back to the Matrix, and keep the system in place?

Jesus' 3day Exploit

My Computer

Image by aLii_ via Flickr

I love MIT. I was on the subway today with a MIT computer geek and we started talking shop with me polishing my geek cred. Star Trek, the upcoming Anime convention: it was 15 minutes that would make my spouse twitch a little bit.

Then the conversation got even more interesting. He saw I had my cross out and visible and asked if I was a Christian. I said yes, I am a pastor, and I actually have a blog called "Hacking Christianity." He liked the blog name and then said something that really turned wheels in my head. Here's roughly what we said:

Hacker: You know what I think? I think if Death was a system, then Jesus hacked the system of death. We could say he did it through a 0day exploit.
Me: Or in Jesus' case, a 3day exploit.
Hacker: Exactly. He broke it open for everyone.

In hacking, a 0day exploit is a vulnerability in a system that is so newly uncovered that it is unfixed (hence: zero days in existence). It is not a virus, but knowledge of the vulnerability is shared from hacker to hacker once it is released into the wild. The company then has to fix the system quickly to keep the hack from working anymore. The longer the gap between detection and fixing it, the greater the 0day hack.

I like this metaphor because it speaks to nerds about what Jesus did.

Jesus hacked the system of death by living and dying in a way that death hadn't seen before or knew how to contain, even in a tomb.
Three days later, Jesus escaped from death and told of his 3day exploit to his followers, with instructions to spread it "to all the nations."
The followers did so, and the hack continues to work for generations of followers because the exploit of the system of death is unfixable. The hack is eternal life.

Nerds. You never know what they might come up with.

Thoughts?

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What are your 13 Church Arguments?

Howard Fineman was on the Colbert Report talking about the 13 arguments that define America. While Stephen Colbert, obviously, digresses far away from the book topic, there's a few nuggets worth extracting.

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First, Fineman articulates that within a nation, the arguments work. They are relevant and understood. When you move out of that nation, and the arguments need translation. For instance, other countries don't understand our arguments, and thus they look silly or need explanation.

Second, Fineman said that the 13 key arguments are key because they are interpretations of key values. For instance:

Once you accept the personhood of an individual, then you have to say "who deserves to be an American person entitled to the protections of American law"...what rights do we extend to immigrants once they are on our soil?

It makes me wonder what are the key arguments that our faith communities struggle with and that define us and that are untranslateable outside our faith community context.

Each church is a nation, with key arguments that keep on coming up (in healthy or unhealthy ways). Perhaps then the approach is not to answer the arguments, or silence the arguments. Instead, find out what are the key values that underline the arguments, and nuance and expand them.

For instance, coming to a better understanding of the value of personhood in politics leads to transformation to everything from immigrants to abortion. Thus, coming to a better understanding of "holy ground" may transform how the church understands trustees, building usage, and use of the church as a safe sanctuary for illegal immigrants on the run.

What are the 13 arguments in your church, and what are the values that they are based on? What are the ways that one can massage those values to lead to consensus?

Discuss in the comments!

Religious Prohibitions and Porn

I love it when what I'm reading offline and online complement or frame one another. Here's one for today:

Offline, I'm reading through The Fidelity of Betrayal by Peter Rollins, I got to a section where Rollins talks about how our religious convictions allow us to continue to act in ways with a minimum of guilt:

Is this not what Paul intimately understood when he wrote that the law and sin are interconnected, that is, that religious prohibitions generate the very activity they attempt to abolish? ... Paul understood that the law, while manifested as the obstacle to sin, secretly provided it with oxygen. So then, strange as it may first sound, religious convictions can thus provide an implicit command to act in a way that they explicitly reject.

(Fidelity of Betrayal, page 168)

Online, this popped up in my feed reader and I used it in my sermon on Sunday:

Residents of 27 states who passed laws banning gay marriages had 11% more pornography subscribers than states that don’t restrict marriage.

Source: ABC News

Interesting! I know correlation is not causation, but it's interesting that religious convictions against sexual minorities has a correlating uptick in pornography consumption. Hmm....possibly a bit selective in our sexual ethics, aren't we?

Saturday Musing

Sin is...the beginning of empathy.

(original David, hat tip Jeromy)

Thoughts or reflections?

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